The museum looked bare and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily—a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable or encouraging about it.
The boys sat down facing each other on two boxes, and Ambrose at once began his story. Alarming as the news was, he had a faint hope while he was telling it that David might not think it so bad as he did. David always took things calmly, and his matter-of-fact way of looking at them was often a support to Ambrose, whose imagination made him full of fears. So now when he had finished he looked wistfully at his brother and said, in a tone full of awe:
“Should you think we really are thieves?”
David’s blue eyes got very large and round, but before answering this question he put another: “What can they do to thieves?”
“Put them in prison, and make them work hard for ever so long,” replied Ambrose. “They used to hang them,” he added gloomily.
“I don’t believe father would let them put us in prison,” said David.
“He couldn’t help it,” said Ambrose. “Nobody’s father can. Don’t you remember when Giles Brown stole a silver mug, his father walked ten miles to ask them to let him off, and they wouldn’t?”
“Well, but,”—said David, feeling that there was a difference between the two cases—“he stole a thing out of a house, and we didn’t; and his father was a hedger and ditcher, and our father is vicar of Easney.”
“That wouldn’t matter,” said Ambrose. “It would depend on Miss Barnicroft. She wouldn’t let us off. She said she couldn’t bear boys. She’d be glad to have us punished.”
He rested his chin on his hand and stared forlornly on the ground.